Tuck it In

Tonight the husband discovered that he can tuck my hair into my pants. We both laughed. Such revelations should probably result in an immediate hairdresser appointment, but the thought scares the willies out of me. Every attempt to chop off my locks in the past caused crestfallen feelings and irreverent prayers, "and please bless that MJ will like her new haircut." I don't even want to think about what Atrain would do. It can't be common for a three year old to regularly tell his mommy not to cut her hair. I wonder how easy it would be to fashion a stuffed animal with a braid of human hair for him to hold at night time.

The husband's odd discovery reminded me of a few funny things my mother used to regularly remind me to do. I can still hear her voice telling my five year old self to, "Remember to pull your hair over your shoulder when you are going to the bathroom." I don't really remember ever having a hairy scary bathroom accident when I was little. I wonder if she had any premise other than paranoia for her preoccupation with my placement of my ponytail while on the pot. And then there was the "tuck it in" rule she regularly rehearsed when she dropped me off at gymnastics class. Her worse fear was that I would break my neck while back-hand-springing. So, I was always advised to tuck my pony tail down my shirt before swinging into a round of flips. How funny. Maybe she's the reason I'm still so attached to having long hair. I had to work so hard to keep it clean and safe, I guess I'm still not ready to give it up.

Cuts and Butts

I’m sitting in the parking lot of “Cookie Cutters” waiting for Atrain to wake up so that we can snag a walk in appointment. I tried to cut his hair this week. I’m usually pretty good at it, but I don’t know what happened this time. I was wrestling Atrain with the scissors when the husband looked up from his computer and said “MJ!” with a guffaw, “It looks like a girl’s cut—like the duck butt cut.” I was angry. Considering the difficulty of the task, I thought I was doing a pretty good job. “What? You try it!” I barked back at him. Then I stood back. He was right. It was an extremely short version of an A-line. Even though I do prefer an A-line on Atrain over the bowl cut the husband loves, I’m going to need a little help correcting this one.

I also need a little help recovering from one of Atrain’s sweet observations. This week has been the week of the potty, so we have all become accustomed to toilet “tell and show.” Every time we need to go, we tell everyone, then show each other the results. It’s supposed to help boost confidence in the trainee. But today it burst the confidence of the trainer. Before we left for Cookie Cutters I was trying to get Atrain to go one last time. So, I announced that I needed to go, and that we should race to see who got to the potty first. Atrain won, and he did his business beautifully. I followed suit and when I was finished Atrain looked up at me and said, “You have a bouncy bum!” with a silly grin.

Hum. At first I gave myself the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe he didn’t mean what he had just said. After all, I was feeling pretty good about myself after covering quite a few miles on my morning run. “What did you say?” I asked. “You’re bum—it’s bouncy!” He said laughing as he slapped me on the rear, admiring its jolly jiggle. “You’re right, Atrain, I have a silly bouncy bum!” I said, giggling at the situation. Oh well. I needed a little more motivation to work of the extra few pregnancy pounds still bouncing around. Glad my kids keep me in check.